The Second Confession

Chapter 4

Hours later, in my room on the second floor, which had three big windows, two three-quarter beds, and the kind of furniture and rugs I will never own but am perfectly willing to use as a transient without complaining, I got clean and neat for dinner. Then I retrieved my keys from where I had hid them behind a book on a shelf, took my medicine case from the caribou bag, and unlocked it. This was a totally different thing from Rony’s exhibition of bad manners, since I was there on business, and the nature of my business required me to carry various unusual items in what I called my medicine case. All I took from it was a tiny, round, soft light brown object, which I placed tenderly in the little inner coin pocket inside the side pocket of my jacket. I handled it with tweezers because it was so quick to dissolve that even the moisture of my fingers might weaken it. I relocked the medicine case and returned it to the bag.

There was a knock on my door and I said come in. It opened and Madeline entered and advanced, enveloped in a thin white film of folds that started at her breasts and stopped only at her ankles. It made her face smaller and her eyes bigger.

“How do you like my dress, Archie?” she asked.

“Yep. You may not call that formal, but it certainly—” I stopped. I looked at her. “I thought you said you liked the name Andy. No?”

“I like Archie even better.”

“Then I’d better change over. When did Father confide in you?”

“He didn’t.” She opened her eyes. “You think I think I’m sophisticated and just simply impenetrable, don’t you? Maybe I am, but I wasn’t always. Come along, I want to show you something.” She turned and started off.

I followed her out and walked beside her along the wide hall, across a landing, and down another hall into another wing. The room she took me into, through a door that was standing open, was twice as big as mine, which I had thought was plenty big enough, and in addition to the outdoor summer smell that came in the open windows it had the fragrance of enormous vases of roses that were placed around. I would just as soon have taken a moment to glance around at details, but she took me across to a table, opened a bulky leather-bound portfolio as big as an atlas to a page where there was a marker, and pointed.

“See? When I was young and gay!”

I recognized it instantly because I had one like it at home. It was a clipping from the Gazette of September ninth, 1940. I have not had my picture in the paper as often as Churchill or Rocky Graziano, or even Nero Wolfe, but that time it happened that I had been lucky and shot an automatic out of a man’s hand just before he pressed the trigger.

I nodded. “A born hero if I ever saw one.”

She nodded back. “I was seventeen. I had a crush on you for nearly a month.”

“No wonder. Have you been showing this around?”

“I have not! Damn it, you ought to be touched!”

“Hell, I am touched, but not as much as I was an hour ago. I thought you liked my nose or the hair on my chest or something, and here it was only a childhood memory.”

“What if I feel it coming back?”

“Don’t try to sweeten it. Anyway, now I have a problem. Who else might possibly remember this picture — and there have been a couple of others — besides you?”

She considered. “Gwenn might, but I doubt it, and I don’t think anyone else would. If you have a problem, I have a question. What are you here for? Louis Rony?”

It was my turn to consider, and I let her have a poker smile while I was at it.

“That’s it,” she said.

“Or it isn’t. What if it is?”

She came close enough to take hold of my lapels with both hands, and her eyes were certainly big. “Listen, you born hero,” she said earnestly. “No matter what I might feel coming back or what I don’t, you be careful where you head in on anything about my sister. She’s twenty-two. When I was her age I was already pretty well messed up, and she’s still as clean as a rose — my God, I don’t mean a rose, you know what I mean. I agree with my dad about Louis Rony, but it all depends on how it’s done. Maybe the only way not to hurt her too much is to shoot him. I don’t really know what he is to her. I’m just telling you that what matters isn’t Dad or Mother or me or Rony, but it’s my sister, and you’d better believe me.”

It was the combination of circumstances. She was so close, and the smell of roses was so strong, and she was so damned earnest after dallying around with me all afternoon, that it was really automatic. When, after a minute or two, she pushed at me, I let her go, reached for the portfolio and closed it, and took it to a tier of shelves and put it on the lowest one. When I got back to her she looked a little flushed but not too overcome to speak.

“You darned fool,” she said, and had to clear her throat. “Look at my dress now!” She ran her fingers down through the folds. “We’d better go down.”

As I went with her down the wide stairs to the reception hall it occurred to me that I was getting my wires crossed. I seemed to have a fair start on establishing a personal relationship, but not with the right person.

We ate on the west terrace, where the setting sun, coming over the tops of the trees beyond the lawn, was hitting the side of the house just above our heads as we sat down. By that time Mrs. Sperling was the only one who was calling me Mr. Goodwin. She had me at her right, probably to emphasize my importance as the son of a business associate of the Chairman of the Board, and I still didn’t know whether she knew I was in disguise. It was her that Junior resembled, especially the wide mouth, though she had filled in a little. She seemed to have her department fairly under control, and the looks and manners of the help indicated that they had been around quite a while and intended to stay.

After dinner we loafed around the terrace until it was about dark and then went inside, all but Gwenn and Rony, who wandered off across the lawn. Webster Kane and Mrs. Sperling said they wanted to listen to a broadcast, or maybe it was video. I was invited to partake of bridge, but said I had a date with Sperling to discuss photography plans for tomorrow, which was true. He led me to a part of the house I hadn’t seen yet, into a big high-ceilinged room with four thousand books around the walls, a stock ticker, and a desk with five phones on it among other things, gave me a fourth or fifth chance to refuse a cigar, invited me to sit, and asked what I wanted. His tone was not that of a host to a guest, but of a senior executive to one not yet a junior executive by a long shot. I arranged my tone to fit.

“Your daughter Madeline knows who I am. She saw a picture of me once and seems to have a good memory.”

He nodded. “She has. Does it matter?”

“Not if she keeps it to herself, and I think she will, but I thought you ought to know. You can decide whether you had better mention it to her.”

“I don’t think so. I’ll see.” He was frowning, but not at me. “How is it with Rony?”

“Oh, we’re on speaking terms. He’s been pretty busy. The reason I asked to see you is something else. I notice there are keys for the guest-room doors, and I approve of it, but I got careless and dropped mine in the swimming pool, and I haven’t got an assortment with me. When I go to bed I’ll want to lock my door because I’m nervous, so if you have a master key will you kindly lend it to me?”

There was nothing slow about him. He was already smiling before I finished. Then he shook his head. “I don’t think so. There are certain standards — oh, to hell with standards. But he is here as my daughter’s guest, with my permission, and I think I would prefer not to open his door for you. What reason have you—”

“I was speaking of my door, not someone else’s. I resent your insinuation, and I’m going to tell my father, who owns stock in the corporation, and he’ll resent it too. Can I help it if I’m nervous?”

He started to smile, then thought it deserved better than that, and his head went back for a roar of laughter. I waited patiently. When he had done me justice he got up and went to the door of a big wall safe, twirled the knob back and forth, and swung the door open, pulled a drawer out and fingered its contents, and crossed to me with a tagged key in his hand.

“You can also shove your bed against the door,” he suggested.

I took the key. “Yes, sir, thank you, I will,” I told him and departed.

When I returned to the living room, which was about the size of a tennis court, I found that the bridge game had not got started. Gwenn and Rony had rejoined the party. With a radio going, they were dancing in a space by the doors leading to the terrace, and Jimmy Sperling was dancing with Connie Emerson. Madeline was at the piano, concentrating on trying to accompany the radio, and Paul Emerson was standing by, looking down at her flying fingers with his face sourer than ever. At the end of dinner he had taken three kinds of pills, and perhaps had picked the wrong ones. I went and asked Madeline to dance, and it took only a dozen steps to know how good she was. Still more relationship.

A little later Mrs. Sperling came in, and she was soon followed by Sperling and Webster Kane. Before long the dancing stopped, and someone mentioned bed, and it began to look as if there would be no chance to dispose of the little brown capsule I had got from my medicine case. Some of them had patronized the well-furnished bar on wheels which had been placed near a long table back of a couch, but not Rony, and I had about decided that I was out of luck when Webster Kane got enthusiastic about nightcaps and started a selling campaign. I made mine bourbon and water because that was what Rony had shown a preference for during the afternoon, and the prospect brightened when I saw Rony let Jimmy Sperling hand him one. It went as smooth as if I had written the script. Rony took a swallow and then put his glass on the table when Connie Emerson wanted both his hands to show him a rumba step. I took a swallow from mine to make it the same level as his, got the capsule from my pocket and dropped it in, made my way casually to the table, put my glass down by Rony’s in order to have my hands for getting out a cigarette and lighting it, and picked the glass up again, but the wrong one — or I should say the right one. There wasn’t a chance the maneuver had been observed, and it couldn’t have been neater.

But there my luck ended. When Connie let him go Rony went to the table and retrieved his glass, but the damn fool didn’t drink. He just held onto it. After a while I tried to prime him by sauntering over to where he was talking with Gwenn and Connie, joining in, taking healthy swallows from my glass, and even making a comment on the bourbon, but he didn’t lift it for a sip. The damn camel. I wanted to ask Connie to get a knee lock on him so I could pour it down his throat. Two or three of them were saying good night and leaving, and I turned around to be polite. When I turned back again Rony had stepped to the bar to put his glass down, and when he moved away there were no glasses there but empty ones. Had he suddenly gulped it down? He hadn’t. I went to put my glass down, reached across for a pretzel, and lowered my head enough to get a good whiff of the contents of the ice bucket. He had dumped it in there.

I guess I told people good night; anyway I got up to my room. Naturally I was sore at myself for having bungled it, and while I undressed I went back over it carefully. It was a cinch he hadn’t seen me switch the glasses, with his back turned and no mirror he could have caught it in. Neither had Connie, for her view had been blocked by him and she only came up to his chin. I went over it again and decided no one could have seen me, but I was glad Nero Wolfe wasn’t there to explain it to. In any case, I concluded in the middle of a deep yawn, I wouldn’t be using Sperling’s master key. Whatever reason Rony might have had for ditching the drink, he sure had ditched it, which meant he was not only undoped but also alerted... and therefore... therefore something, but what... therefore... the thought was important and it was petering out on me...

I reached for my pajama top but had to stop to yawn, and that made me furious because I had no right to yawn when I had just fumbled on a simple little thing like doping a guy... only I didn’t feel furious at all... I just felt awful damn sleepy...

I remember saying to myself aloud through gritted teeth, “You’re doped you goddam dope and you get that door locked,” but I don’t remember locking it. I know I did, because it was locked in the morning.